THINGS I LEARNED IN MY
FIRST
OF COLLEGE
SEMESTER
FUCK POEM: THE SEQUEL we’re the champions of division 3 fingering we won’t make you cum but we will write angry poems about you i’ve said it before but everyone on this campus just wants to get fucked and tries to call it intellectual— i mean tinder is not a viable way to find human connection; except when it is— i mean mosh pits are frothing mouths and we’re the teeth, clenching together because we’ve been taught that violence is intimacy. which is why when i make small talk on the porch shivering because i forgot my coat inside, it feels like when you choked me in bed without asking. the real version is this: no one ever laughs at the funny parts of my poems fuck you and fuck your silence fuck your trauma and your birkenstocks writing poetry about you exhausts me.
i just can’t seem to get behind this whole trend of showing interest by calculating how many fucks you have to subtract before you’re desirable. you’re always smirking and i’m always trying to tell if the angle of your lips is the equivalent of “flirting”—oh, fuck. i forgot my protractor at home so maybe i’ll take you back with me wait until you fall asleep and measure the angle of your slightly parted lips in the dark maybe i’ll dance close enough to you that i can feel your specific heat through my shirt but far enough that you’ll still be dancing with someone else the real version is this: i’d like to keep it this way. you’re a bead of mercury running away from a smashed thermometer you called me radiant and handed me lemon ices, palm up and grinning looking at me like a piece of meat. i didn’t feel butchered just well-seasoned later i tried to make myself feel better by saying i would’ve thought of someone else while you fucked me.
i wouldn’t have told you how much your fingers hurt. i would have asked you to choke me. but none of these things happen so i go buy grilled cheese at 2am. its heavy grease makes my lips feel less alone last weekend i let a girl dance swing in my lungs. last last weekend i almost punched a boy in the face at eclectic. last last last weekend i cried in front of a bunch of strangers at westco to an iggy azalea song. there are always so many things i am inspired by each weekend. i tell myself i should start taking notes because i forget it all by monday. people say don’t date poets unless you want poems written about you fuck that don’t date poets at all. don’t fuck poets. don’t speak to poets. don’t even look at them; they’re just cardiovascular hitchhikers using your arteries as handlebars. we never forget how to ride a poem back to our exes house. people are domesticated animals that don’t know how to wash their own dishes. eople are meat markets using each others canines as the grinders. slam you on a grill. slam you on a bun. serve me your poem medium-rare with ketchup and lettuce but hold the onions because i might kiss someone else later.
HOUSE PARTY there are a lot of days where i skip my meds just so i feel like i can. after three days or so i usually give in. my friends and i used to print out our rejection letters from literary journals and tape them on the walls— i wonder if i did that with the texts i’ve received from every girl who’s ever stopped talking to me if i would care less what people think of me i once went on a first date while i was going through withdrawal i talked tangled yarn around her and played percussion on a chainlink fence. she liked me when i was spinning but not when i was still. i like walking through dark frigid air on weekend nights for two reasons; 1) it makes me feel more free than i actually am 2) it keeps my beer cold, even in my pockets
last night i thought about california for the first time in over a month. last time i was home i recognized myself less than my friends did. the easiest way for me to explain it to them is to say i’ve gotten good at being angry without being destructive and good at being destructive without being angry. i walk faster and laugh louder. i’m more obnoxious but also more likable. i no longer expect people to always agree with me. everyone here is always on their phones. i am always on my phone. if i tell you i am writing poems about you will it make me more or less of an asshole. the grass here is always too wet to lie down in but i do it anyway. the most homesick i get is that i forget i now live in a place that isn’t in a drought.
i separate myself from my fears of the concept of space by defining that kissing happens more to the other person than it does to me. i like astronomy because it is a safer way to think about questions of distance and closeness. i like astronomy because it makes me feel like it’s more okay to be unimportant. stars look like millions of antidepressants on the right kinds of nights. last night was one of those nights; today i didn’t take my medication.
THINGS I LEARNED IN MY FIRST SEMESTER AT COLLEGE: it is worth it. it is not worth it. don’t bite the bullets they will end up in your feet. whenever she asks you what you’re thinking the answer is usually either kissing her or how awful you are. ask her to punch you instead of kiss you because that will hurt less. your hair smells different than it did when you left home. it is not only because you changed your shampoo. it will feel like someone has broken every one of your ribs and you are ecstatic. every day a flock of birds erupts from your chest. they return at night to sleep. these carrier pigeons in your chest have no home addresses. the pronouns in your poems are playing musical chairs. the less attracted you are to everyone in the room the more attracted they will be to you. she has come to your room at 4am for 3 nights in a row and you am still unconvinced that she likes you back. boundaries are important. hard cider is important. crying is important. it is possible to cry so hard your nose starts bleeding. do not like girls with long hair: she will leave her hair on your pillows and sheets and everything will smell like her when she finally leaves at 2pm on a sunday. hold yourself accountable and if you cant, make someone else hold you (accountable). anyone who makes you prove yourself is not worth your time. queer drama never ends. draw things for children and they will draw things for you. there are always new methods of tenderness waiting to be discovered. hope can take other forms than a boiling kettle. just because
you write a book about someone doesn’t mean you cant write another book about another person. there are poems writing themselves on the roof of your mouth while you sleep and they are not in them. it is surprisingly easy to ignore every impulse for self care when there is no one to be accountable to. people notice your scars they’re just too politically correct to ask you about them. the cold will completely numb your face and it will feel miraculous. you can get shin splints from moshing too hard. wild mint does not grow here. you are far from any large bodies of water. hold your tongue. people only care about your problems as long as they can relate them to their own. all your new friends care about your problems because they care about you even though you and your problems are incoherent. someone you know says he sleeps next to people like fishsticks but you think you sleep next to people more like canned tunafish, not mashed up because your bodies are close just mashed up because you’re a total fucking mess. the more emotionally confused you are the less exhausted you will feel. you are becoming nocturnal because it is easier to be close to people in the dark. it is rude to fuck people’s brains with poetic strap-ons. you care more about what people think of you than you could ever admit. self deprecation is only hot in la dispute songs. spotify is evil but so are you so keep using it. if you don’t eat you can mistake the hollowness for missing someone you don’t miss anymore. melodrama tastes like rice krispies just before they get soggy.
UNMARKED GRAVES i sleep next to my best friends like food in the frozen aisle and wonder where i learned my definition of intimacy if i’ll let a girl i’ve known for two weeks climb into my bed and arms and cry but flinch away when the girls i’ve known for 13 years slide too close to me across the mattress. my poetry class made a collective sex playlist and listened to it together. when we got to my song everyone just looked uncomfortable and disturbed my professor said it was like prescription drug sex; i didn’t disagree. if sex lives were alcohol mine would be a jug of carlo rossi wine: red and highly acidic. most days the world is ending at least a little bit i take off my sweater and she sees apocalypses lining my arms asks how fresh and i don’t know how to answer just remember when you held my legs and cried.
i try to open my poems like cadavers let her sleep inside the rot let her lips perform the autopsy i receive the autopsy report by means of snapchat she 95% ignores me for 4 days. new england is more liberal than california because it doesn’t try as hard to hide its graveyards. the city of colma has a larger population of dead people than it does living. san francisco buries its dead in landfill and puts grass on top. maybe the next big earthquake will shake these skeletons out of their closets and into the sea where we won’t have to look at them every time we change our expensive “thrifted” clothing that someone who went to a liberal arts college picked out at goodwill to sell on etsy or in their popup shop. i set up a pop up shop at every house party i go to sell bits of myself to any girl who lets me put my hand on her waist.
a girl i barely know leans in close and says “question: do you want to go make out at my house?” i almost reply “special offer this month only: i’ll fuck you but you don’t have to fuck me.” i don’t even let her take my pants off because then she might see all the casualties i lined up like caskets on my thighs when she curls up against me in her sleep and drapes her legs over mine i promise myself i’ll never let her know she’s one of them i wonder if she’s added me to her own death toll yet she added an emoji to my name on her iphone that’s the same thing as a tombstone right? i’ve been renovating my poems, adding guest rooms to the pronouns the walls are thin so she hears me moan your name at night while she tries to sleep she comes to an open mic with me and asks if my poems were about you i want to reply “if you dont like me why does it matter if i hang out with you and your ex over thanksgiving”
i’ve stopped burying details under metaphor because i want her to feel as uncomfortable as i did when she said “no it could’ve been any girl” after i ask if it was a me thing or a loneliness thing even though she spent a week texting me “wya” 30 minutes after i left her side i’m too bad at math to calculate the distance between what it means when she says “i like you too” and “i hope next semester i’m able to be intimate with people again” i just want to know what it is about me that gets into bed with people who don’t want me but still ask me to stay when i try to leave and why i always stay. it’s probably because i treat people like junk food; i eat the things that are worst for me. i think it’s because you feel like home and she feels like falling asleep on a stranger’s floor after a long night of dancing, most weekends i try to get drunk enough that i to like being homeless.
GIORGIA SAGE © 2014